Alumni

JAMES F. FLANAGAN

Jim Flanagan is a 1972 graduate of Seton Hall Law School. Following a judicial clerkship, he served in the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office from 1973 until 1979, where he tried 88 jury trials for offenses including homicide, sexual assault, drugs and gambling. In 1979, he joined the trial section of the New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice as a deputy attorney general. In 1981, he was asked to transfer to the Division of Gaming Enforcement where he handled many casino licensing hearings before the Casino Control Commission. Jim then joined the United States Attorney’s Office in Newark in 1986, where for 3 years he worked in the Special Prosecutions Division handling political corruption, drug and casino related matters. For the next 15 years, Jim served as a partner at Tompkins, McGuire, Wachenfeld & Barry in Newark, where he handled civil litigation, casino matters, estate cases and criminal indictments. In addition, following corruption and infiltration of organized crime, the United States District Court appointed Jim as a Monitor to run and reorganize the affairs of Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local 54 in Atlantic City. This monitorship of the union, comprised of nearly 14,000 employees, is generally believed by labor law scholars to be the most successful to date in the United States.

In 2003, Jim left Tompkins McGuire to return to his roots in criminal prosecution. He currently does health care fraud prosecutions for the Office of the Insurance Fraud Prosecutor within the Division of Criminal Justice in Whippany.

For fun he plays as much golf as possible. He also has visited 156 major and minor league baseball parks and 64 major and minor league hockey arenas in North America. He has rooted in vain for the Chicago Cubs for more than 50 years!